Spring Awakening - UMD Theatre

A Provocative Anthem for Doomed Youth

Sheryl Jensen

The Duluth News Tribune 

April 14, 2016

Teenage sex, abortion, child abuse, incest, suicide and homosexuality.

With these “taboo” topics at its core, it was no wonder that the original version of the play Spring Awakening was considered scandalous. The 1891 work, by German playwright Frank Wedekind, was banned and then later underwent censoring when it was first performed in 1906.

Composer Duncan Sheik and book writer/lyricist Steven Sater used Sederkind’s controversial work as the basis for their provocative musical of the same title that premiered on Broadway in 2006 and won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2007.

UMD’s production hits most of the chords of Wedekind’s story of repressed youth, addressed anew in this modern musical adaptation. Dressed in 1891 period costumes, the cast members perform like rock stars in the show’s anachronistic mix. With all the pain, angst, sadness and anger they can muster, the 17-member cast sings about the bruises and wounds from the repressed society in which they live, and the aching for the spring awakening they hope to find.

Amelia Barr breaks the audience’s hearts as the hopelessly romantic character Wendla who has no idea where babies come from, until she becomes pregnant. Barr’s solo moments are particularly powerful, revealing the innermost soul of every teenage girl, beginning with the show’s opening number, “Mama Who Bore Me.”

Dylan Rugh plays Melchior, Wendla’s love interest, and the most outspoken in word and thought against the closed society of overbearing parents and autocratic teachers. Rugh is utterly believable and honest in every moment onstage as his character tries to beat the system that is intent on breaking him down. His strongest vocal moments come in his solo “All That’s Known” and solo parts in “Left Behind.” Rugh and Barr’s Act II plaintive duet “Whispering” was another musical highlight of the evening.

Erica VonBank, as Ilse, the most free-spirited of the teenage characters, has a lovely duet with the tragic Moritz, played by Thomas McDanel, as they overlap “Blue Wind” and “Don’t Do Sadness.”

In multiple roles as all the adult female and male characters, Kayla Peters and Wes Anderson get to stretch their acting chops by playing both sympathetic and unsympathetic parents and other characters with the most improbable of names such as Fraulein Grossenbustenhaulter, a lusty piano teacher, and Herr Knochenbruch, a really nasty professor).

Strong supporting cast and ensemble members play all the varieties and stripes of angsty teenagers with conviction, moving seamlessly from the exuberance of their explosive musical numbers back to their drab, daily lives. The show’s finale, “The Song of Purple Summer,” beginning with VonBank’s gorgeous solo, and then adding full company, is the evening’s musical tour de force.

Director/choreographer Rebecca Katz Harwood creates both masterful stage pictures and interesting, angular choreographic movements, and has full command of how to make the show’s complex themes relevant for modern audiences. Music director Andy Kust conducts a strong seven-piece onstage orchestra that helps to drive the show’s more hard-pounding rock songs and to underscore the lush ballads.

And while Spring Awakening is ultimately a Tragedy of Childhood, its original subtitle, UMD’s talented cast members bring the audience into the universal collective memory of that ethereal Netherworld, between being a child and becoming an adult.

Rhinoceros - UMD Theatre

The Rhinoceroses are in Charge in UMD's Absurdist Play

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune 

March 4, 2016

Snorting, galumphing and stampeding rhinoceroses have taken over. And while that may sound eerily like the current presidential political campaign, it is also the state of things in UMD's compelling production of French playwright Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros.

The plot is as absurd as it sounds. The populous of a small French village is astounded to see a runaway rhinoceros wreaking havoc in town square. Gradually, in a device worthy of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," one by one, the townspeople inexplicably transform into rhinoceroses and join the marauding herd.

Part black comedy, part horror story, and part cautionary tale, UMD's production fires on all cylinders on both the technical and acting sides of the aisle. The audience is corralled by enclosing walls with an abstract pattern of angled wood and ominous black openings. The intimacy of the German Expressionist style setting from Jenna Mady makes the audience feel even more claustrophobic when the proliferation of the rhinoceros takes a serious uptick.

Mitch Newport plays Berenger, the play's Everyman, who sees the horror around him growing and mounts a fierce internal battle to resist the allure of becoming just another one of the mindless, myopic beasts. Newport's earnest and mature performance makes an alcoholic underdog into a solitary hero by show's end.

Phil Hoelscher is a standout as Berenger's fussbudget, fidgety friend Jean who is one of the first to become a rhinoceros. Hoelscher's onstage transformation — with body contortions and aided by Ben Harvey's fabulous sound mix for Jean's voice alteration — is an acting tour de force.

Director Ann Aiko Bergeron calls the story "a comedy — of sorts." The first act is filled with funny moments, both with the verbal dexterity of the actors in their supposedly "logical" overlapping conversations and in the physical comedy of this very capable ensemble of 11 actors, many playing multiple roles. Kelsie Bias' whimsical costumes also help create what has the feel, at first, of a witty French farce.

The comedy all but disappears in the second half, however, when it becomes clear that we are seeing the results of what can happen when people do not fight evil with the spirit of their better angels. The symbolic lighting on the stage floor of green scales, the increasingly louder thundering herd sound effects and the actors menacingly encroaching, wearing simple but genuinely creepy rhinoceros masks, build the tension and change the play's tone entirely.

Recalling his own escape from his home country of Romania during WWII, Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros in 1959 to portray allegorically the Nazism and fascism he had seen spread across Europe. His message is clear, that chaos ensues when basically good people succumb to mass hysteria, unscrupulous leaders and mindless propaganda. Society degenerates into savagery where the human qualities of kindness, love, respect, compassion and trust are all mercilessly stomped on by hobnail boots.

"I am not joining you" is Berenger's plaintive but determined assertion when he is the last man standing against the pack of horned pachyderms. That refrain has never seemed more urgent or immediate than right now, proving that Rhinoceros has never been more relevant than it is today.

All's Well That Ends Well - UMD Theatre

All’s Well in UMD's Shakespearian Romp
Sheryl Jensen
Duluth News Tribune
February 4, 2016

Most often in the Shakespearian canon, it is abundantly clear which plays are comedies and which are tragedies. For a few of the plays, however, the lines seem less clearly drawn. All’s Well That Ends Well falls into what are called the “problem” plays with a foot in each realm.

In the University of Minnesota Duluth’s production, director Kate Ufema has mostly solved the “problem,” landing her production decidedly more in the comedy camp. While there are still darker elements, characterizations and plot devices, particularly in the last half of the show, over
all it showcased the comedic talents of the actors to the delight of the opening night audience.

Although the cast is predominantly underclassmen, with just a few of the more seasoned veterans in the theater program, each actor is at ease with the language; they “iambed” and “pentametered” their way through the proceedings with aplomb.

Any production of All’s Well ultimately rises and falls on the actress playing Helena. In this fairy tale-like story, Helena cures the ailing King of France and receives her pick of any husband in the kingdom in return. Her choice, alas, is her long unrequited love, the young and handsome Bertram, who weds and then spurns her. The main plot line follows Helena as she uses her wit and ingenuity to win his love.

Erin Hartford brings an endearing earnestness and sweetness to Helena, a role that is a balancing act where the audience needs to see her not as a doormat, but rather as an intelligent woman who knows what she wants and how to go about getting it. Hartford finds that balance and charms both the audience and eventually the recalcitrant Bertram.

Two supporting standouts are Brian Saice as Lavache, the clown, and Ryan Fargo as Parolles. Saice is establishing his wheelhouse in broad comedy, playing one of Shakespeare’s patented wise fools. From his first entrance in his wildly colored motley vest and hat, he evokes a long-lost Marx Brother, playing the fool’s physical and textual comedy to perfection.

Ryan Fargo sinks his considerable acting chops into the role of the arrogant blowhard, Parolles, who is all talk, pomp and bluster early on but gets his well-deserved comeuppance by evening’s end. Fargo also finds the fine nuances of the text and the appropriate physicality to bring the role to ostentatious life.

In a fun bit of casting, Lendley Black steps out of his UMD’s chancellor’s office to return to his theatrical roots. He holds his own with the talented students surrounding him, bringing a regal air and gravitas to the story.

The show is visually stunning, with Curt Phillips’ elegant towering arched wall and parapet, marvelously lit by James Eischen. Laura Piotrowski’s costumes are, as always, gorgeous, with the men this time getting the more colorful palette, dashing in military outfits in bold shades of red, white and blue, and the requisite plumes, sashes and tassels.

Ultimately, the enjoyment of a Shakespearian play comes down to making it accessible for modern audiences. This production does so delightfully from the opening pantomime to the epilogue, reminding us of how many ways Shakespeare can continue to be both relevant and entertaining.

The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence - UMD Theatre

Watson Intelligence is an Entertaining Puzzlement
Sheryl Jensen
Duluth News Tribune
November 20, 2015

UMD’s current production, The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, is a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” with its intriguingly interwoven series of vignettes played out over three centuries. Director Jenna Soleo-Shanks and her talented cast of three actors offer up a show so dazzlingly complex in its plot and themes that it demands discussion over multiple cups of coffee afterward.

For your scorecards, there are four Watsons: Dr. John Watson, Sherlock Holmes' faithful sidekick; Thomas Watson, valued assistant to Alexander Graham Bell; Josh Watson, computer repairman and member of the Dweeb Team (read Geek Squad); and Watson, a prototype A.I. computer (an homage to the IBM computer that beat the best contestants on Jeopardy).

All four Watsons are played by Dylan Rugh, who is at turns immensely charming, incredibly nerdy, wildly funny, pompously erudite and, in each iteration, the undeniable heart of the show. His roles all establish that the brilliant people among us need their “exquisite helpers” to support them.

Rugh’s physicality, facial expressions and line readings are spot on in all of his Watsonian personae. His strongest portrayal comes as Josh Watson, an entirely improbable “leading man” who wins the audience’s hearts.

Wes Anderson delivers a mature performance as two characters named Merrick, each the eternally disgruntled husband and foil to two of the Watsons. As a modern-day recently elected city auditor and a dark and dangerous Victorian scientist, Anderson has a commanding vocal and physical presence and a dark vibe that serves as an effective contrast to Rugh’s Watsons.

At the center, of course, is a woman, times three, appropriately named Eliza (yes, there are twisted, nasty “Pygmalion” allusions). As a Ph.D. computer designer, a fainting Victorian wife and a thirties radio interviewer, actress Chelsea Campbell is vibrant, annoying, anguished and gorgeous.

She is most convincing in her modern-day role of the neurotic scientist who spends her evening dipping her Twizzlers in Jim Beam, chatting with her computer creation and longing for someone to understand her.

The plot lines linking these three, as they leap-frog through time, practically require a Venn diagram to keep track of — but in all the character configurations and curlicues of story strands are more importantly common thematic threads of love, loneliness, the female psyche, technology and communication.

Sometimes all of this can get too talky, philosophical, and meditative — and the show at two-and-a-half hours (with intermission) starts to drag by evening’s end — but the powerful cast and the considerable strengths in playwright Madeleine George’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize nominated script keep the audience involved.

Kia Lor’s simple but interesting set is anchored by a center scrim with creative projections to distinguish time and place — a train engine’s evocative smoke and accompanying sound effect are particularly stunning. Kudos to costume designer Brandin Stagg for beautiful and effective choices for each era. A tip of the top hat to the actors and their dressers, who manage incredibly fast and complex costume changes for scene after scene.

The sum of the parts of the show comes in a quote towards the end of the evening when Thomas Watson, Bell’s assistant, says, “Connection isn’t elegant, or precise, or rational. But it’s our fate to be bound up with one another, isn’t it? We are all born insufficient, and must look to others to supplement our strength.”

This thought-provoking production showcases actors solidly connecting with each other and their audience in a show that challenges, enlightens and entertains.

DanceWorks - UMD Theatre

DanceWorks at UMD Offers “Fresh-From-the-Oven Dances”

Lawrance Bernabo

Duluth News Tribune

October  22, 2015 

 DanceWorks, which opened on UMD’s mainstage theater on Thursday night, is as enjoyable an evening of dance as you could hope to find.

As Artist Director Rebecca Katz Harwood told us before the show, these were really new, “fresh-from-the-oven dances,” reflecting the work of choreographers and dancers not only from the University of Minnesota Duluth, but outside the university as well.

Two student choreographers created strikingly dramatic pieces. Sarah Hinz’s “Missing You,” set to Sam Smith’s “Lay Me Down,” had Rebekah Meyer dancing over a white dress shirt laid on the stage, her long hair, undone, accenting her spins and dives. In time she was joined by Reese Britts for a bit of ballroom dancing that set up a nice little narrative twist.

The standout piece of the evening, “Escaping the Pigeon Hole,” choreographed by Cassie Liberkowski to Hoziers’ “To Be Alone,” offered a love triangle noir that begins with two masked figures circling a young man. The contrasts between the shifting pairs of dancers versus the odd dancer out (L.J. Klassen, Michael Hassenmueller and Kevin Dustrude), were fascinating, and there were sections exceptionally well-choreographed to the music.

Katz Harwood choreographed two pieces in collaboration with her dancers. “Tranquility” focused primarily on the horizontal, the dancers rolling around on the floor in progressive waves of languid movement to Zoë Keating’s “Sun Will Set.” It was interesting to see how long it was before any of them broke contact with the stage floor.

In comic contrast, “Freedom” offered joyous anarchy, with everybody doing their own thing, appropriately to the Rebirth Brass Band’s “Do Whatcha Wanna.” I admit, I was somewhat disappointed when dancers started doing the same thing, but this delightful piece had an awful lot of laughs.

The pure joy of dance was abundantly evident in the performances by the other two UMD dance groups, both of which had dancers who joined the theater students for other pieces.

The African Dancers evinced the joys of synchronicity, where everybody learns the same dance as a defining aspect of their culture. This is something we lack: Once a generation everybody knows how to hand jive or do the Macarena, but choreographed hand movements and pivoting to the right are not really dancing.

The other two student-choreographed pieces, “Spectrum” by Mai Che Lee with its attitude dancing, and “Memo” by Kelly James, which had a nice sequence reminiscent of depictions of the Three Graces, were largely in this spirit of dancing in unison.

Funk Soul Patrol, the other UMD dance group, did a trio of hip-hop songs, and went from lip-synching while they danced to all six of the dancers getting solo turns while the audience clapped along to “Jump Around” by House of Pain.

“Mobile (2),” choreographed by LilaAnn Coates White, explored the possibilities for two male dancers posing Talia Beech-Brown. This was a slow piece, both graceful and powerful.

The other hip-hop piece, “XO” choreographed by Jack Samuel Gill, had a couple of brief sections that concluded just as they were really getting interesting, so I would have liked to have seen more.

The finale was provided by six dancers from the Twin Cities’ Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater company. “Tales from the Book of Longing,” originally commissioned and presented by the Guthrie Theater, was the most sophisticated piece of the evening with several striking sections emphasizing tension in movement.

A pair of dueling dyads offered the contrasts of molten steel versus melted quicksilver, although it was hard to choose who to watch. Then two male dancers maintained a slow, combative embrace, before the piece concluded with the three female dancers being arbitrarily rearranged on stage by their male counterparts.

The program changes a bit over the course of the performances. The African dancers only appear on opening night, while on Saturday and Sunday special guest artist Rosy Simas performs her acclaimed work “We Wait in the Darkness.”

Tribes - UMD Stage 2

Spoon River - UMD Theatre

Dead Men Do Tell Tales

Sheryl Jensen

Duluth News Tribune

October  1, 2015 

 

A play adaptation based on a 100-year-old poetry collection of 244 epitaphs shouldn’t be quite so much fun. Yet, the opening night audience members for Spoon River Anthology at the University of Minnesota Duluth clearly were finding not only moments to ponder life’s eternal mysteries but also opportunities to laugh and to clap along with the music.
Contrary to the old saying, dead men (and women) indeed do tell tales in director Tom Isbell’s adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 poetry collection Spoon River Anthology. The crisp, 90-minute production (performed without an intermission) flies by with its mix of comedy, pathos, music and dance.

In stories of murder, lust, greed, jealousy, pride, and any number of other human vices, Masters’ voices from the grave tells the provocative secrets and revelations and the mostly unfulfilled hopes and dreams of those “sleeping on the hill” in the town cemetery of the mythical town of Spoon River.

Isbell’s research from his pilgrimage this past summer to Masters’ home turf in Lewistown and Petersburg, Ill., is on glorious display, not only in his selection of which poems to choose and how to arrange them in ever fascinating configurations but also in the projections, with the beautiful, the ugly and the comic in images of American life gone by.

Scenic designer Jenna Mady’s elegant set includes a simple rake of wooden planks, nine mismatched chairs, a small bandstand, a few stacked boxes and frames for the projections. Wesley Darton’s lighting design is appropriately atmospheric without being dark or oppressive. Heather Olson’s costumes are evocative of the period, with simple but effective changes made in progress by adding aprons, shawls, hats and coats.

The ensemble of five men and four women tackle nearly 60 of the poems in earnest direct address to the audience. While the monologues don’t all ring with the same levels of conviction and clarity, each of the cast members has a chance to connect in moments that are brutally honest, delightfully comic and frequently sarcastic.

Because each cast member is called upon to play several characters, it is important for them to distinguish each clearly with style, energy, dialect, projection and expression. Some of the ensemble members succeed at this more universally than others.

The evening’s most effective comic highlights are provided by Brian Saice as a fiddler and a diminutive judge and Phil Hoelscher as the ever-beleaguered husband.  On the tragic side of the ledger, Lauren Schulke resonates with her portrayals of a rape victim, a prostitute and the brutalized town poetess.

While it truly is an ensemble show, Ryan James Fargo brings a special maturity and confidence to his various personas. Fargo’s energy is electric and his understanding of how to take command of the stage and how to set each character apart make him the most compelling to watch.

Music Director Andy Kust (who also worked with Isbell on the adaptation) is the onstage “band,” playing piano and percussion. While the show is not a musical, the use of music in hymns, period songs and underscore helps to evoke mood and to provide another slant on the show’s themes.

The full-company vocals on “Blessed Assurance” and, most particularly, “This Little Light of Mine” are stunning. One of the evening’s other standout musical moments is a lively full-company square dance, choreographed by Rebecca Katz Harwood.

The cast shows an obvious reverence for the poems and the songs throughout, most particularly with the closing hymn, “I Feel Like Traveling On.” The song underscores projections of people in the community who sent in photos of themselves and their loved ones, reminding us all how fleeting such moments are.

The English teacher part of my soul hopes that UMD’s production will spark interest in audience members going back to the original source material, to do their own detective work of how intricately these characters connect in a masterwork that reads like a kaleidoscopic mosaic of the human experience.